WND EXCLUSIVE

God's warning to U.S. headlines for 75 weeks

'Isaiah 9:10 Judgment' top seller among 'Faith & Spirituality' DVDs

It came out in March 2012, and now, for 75 weeks, “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” by WND Films has held court as the top-selling DVD in Amazon’s ‘Faith & Spirituality” category.

It’s a documentary based on “The Harbinger” by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, which came out a few weeks earlier and immediately hurtled to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.

The documentary and the book outline Cahn’s evidence that America is following in the defiant footsteps of ancient Israel as recorded in Isaiah 9:10. Like the Israelites, he explains, America has insisted on rebuilding bigger and better without considering what God was trying to tell the country through the catastrophic events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Isaiah records that Israel had known God and yet turned away from Him. Following a devastating attack by Assyria, rather than returning to God, the leaders declared “with pride and arrogance of heart” a defiant pledge: “The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.” (Isaiah 9:10 KJV).

“The Harbinger,” as well as the “Isaiah 9:10 Judgment,” point out the startling reality that beginning the day after 9/11, several American leaders began repeating that 2,500-year-old vow, word for word, in speeches at the Capitol and elsewhere. In the film, viewers see and hear the actual speeches.

“Seeing is believing,” said Farah. “That’s why I was so determined to make this amazing documentary treatment of Jonathan Cahn’s message that propelled his book ‘The Harbinger’ to the New York Times bestsellers list and kept it there for nearly two years.”

Farah said he’s “convinced that if people see the excerpt they will want to see the entire movie.”

“They will want to share it with their friends and families and church groups. And, most importantly, they will embrace the message of repentance as the key to saving America from destruction,” he said.

One of the first to repeat Israel’s defiance toward God was the majority leader in the U.S. Senate at the time, Tom Daschle – the day after 9/11.

“Having no idea what he was doing, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate was declaring America as under the judgment of God,” Cahn explained. “It was the reenactment of an ancient mystery – and bore the most grave of consequences.”

But Daschle was not the only one. In the aftermath of 9/11, political leaders, businessmen and media personalities all responded to the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center by calling for America to build taller and grander – following in the footsteps of ancient Israel as recorded in Isaiah 9:10, as Cahn wrote in “The Harbinger.”

Daschle led the parade, reading on Sept. 12, 2001, Israel’s vow of defiance and then stating: “That is what we will do. We will rebuild.”

On the fourth anniversary of 9/11, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., a candidate for vice president at the time, delivered a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus, framing his entire address around Isaiah 9:10.

Later, in his first State of the Union Address, Barack Obama framed his speech around the theme: “We will rebuild. We will recover.”

“As a symbol of America’s resolve, my administration will work with Congress and these two leaders to show the world that we will rebuild New York City,” he said.

So what? It seems like a natural reaction of public officials.

But the point of the book and movie is that America is re-enacting an ancient drama played out thousands of years ago when Israel’s leaders did not repent and turn back to God after a limited strike on the land. Instead, their words are recorded in Isaiah 9:10, proclaiming they would simply rebuild bigger and better. The result was eventually the destruction of the nation.

Cahn recalls the “We will rebuild” comments were repeated “like a mantra after 9/11.”

“And the subsequent policies that embodied these words would end up leading to the second shaking, the economic collapse,” he added.

Both the book and the documentary present a series of remarkable parallels between the judgment of ancient Israel and events impacting America since 9/11.

See the trailer for “Isaiah 9:10 Judgment”:

“The fall of ancient Israel hung on an ancient vow made by its leaders in the wake of God’s first warning of national judgment which came in the form of an enemy strike,” explains Cahn. “The vow, found in Isaiah 9:10, is the key to the nine harbingers of judgment that foreshadowed the nation’s destruction. ‘The Harbinger’ reveals how these same nine harbingers of a nation under judgment are now reappearing on American soil. Key in this reappearance is the phenomenon of leaders uttering the ancient vow in one form or another. Sometimes the vow occurs in an eerily precise form, as in Tom Daschle’s public declaration before the U.S. Congress on the day after 9/11, when he recited the judgment vow word for word. Other times it appears in summary form – a voicing of the vow’s central phrase ‘We will rebuild.’ In the days after 9/11, one finds American leaders voicing these three central words, again and again and again, almost as a mantra. One of those who uttered them was the president of the United States, George Bush.”

Cahn continues: “The significance is that President Bush would lead the nation in attempting to undo the effects of 9/11. In itself, there would be nothing wrong with that. The problem is that a nation in defiance of God cannot solve its underlying spiritual problem with political or economic or military solutions. Israel tried to this in its first stages of judgment. But all its efforts to rebuild and come back stronger would backfire. So America’s campaign would involve two foreign wars, vast expenditures of money in the War on Terror, and several economic initiatives to lift the American economy. But all of these campaigns would also backfire in some way and ultimately lead up to the collapse of the American economy. It all began on the day after 9/11 with the full uttering of the ancient vow on Capitol Hill by Tom Daschle, which was then echoed by a host of American leaders – one of them, most significantly, was none other than the president of the United States.”

Cahn explains that one of the harbingers of judgment is the defiance of leaders toward God and their emphasis on “rebuilding” versus repentance and the idea of coming back stronger and better without any thought to what God is trying to convey through catastrophes.

“What we see is defiance, not repentance,” says Cahn.

Cahn says he has since found nine harbingers that tie the problems America has experienced since Sept. 11, 2001, with parallels that led to the destruction of ancient Israel.

“Before God judges a nation, He sends warning,” explains Cahn. “He sent warning to ancient Israel. He even allowed its enemies to breach its borders in a devastating strike that would traumatize the nation. It was a wake-up call, the call to return to God. But the nation responded with defiance. God then gave nine harbingers of judgment, nine prophetic signs, alarms and foreshadows of what was to come. Now America is the nation in rapid departure from God’s will. And God likewise allowed an enemy to breach its borders in a devastating strike – the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It was, likewise, a wake-up call. But America, like Israel, has not responded with repentance, but with defiance. And now the nine harbingers of judgment have reappeared and have done so on American soil.”

Cahn also reveals in “The Harbinger” and “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” something that readers and viewers universally find astonishing – that New York’s Ground Zero actually represents more than the former financial center of the country. It represents the exact place at which America was first consecrated to God in prayer by the country’s new leaders.

“When judgment came to Israel, the calamity returned the people’s attention to the place where the nation had been consecrated to God – the Temple Mount,” says Cahn. “God was calling the nation back to Himself. What about 9/11? Could there be, in the American calamity, as well, a mystery of return? Could there be a prophetic message hidden in the place where it happened? There is a place where America was consecrated to God in prayer. It is also a place linked to a prophetic warning given on that same day – uttered by the nation’s first president – now coming to pass.”

In 1789, newly inaugurated President George Washington gave a prophetic warning at Federal Hall in New York City. He declared that America’s prosperity and protection were dependent upon its adherence to God. Later, the political leaders of the young nation gathered at St. Paul’s Chapel to commit the nation’s future to God’s purposes. That chapel is located at Ground Zero and miraculously survived 9/11 virtually unscathed.

The key to decoding the harbingers, Cahn says, is found in understanding the seemingly innocuous words of Isaiah 9:10, what it meant to Israel and how the history seems to be repeating itself in America today.

These words were first uttered by leaders in Israel and in response to a limited strike by Assyria on the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali – an attack the prophet makes clear is actually part of a limited judgment by God against apostasy. It wasn’t meant to destroy the nation, but to awaken it, according to most commentaries.

But, says Cahn, Israel didn’t take the cue. Instead, the response from the people in Isaiah 9:10 is one of defiance. The brick buildings were toppled, but they vowed to build bigger and better. The little sycamore trees may have been uprooted, but they vowed to plant bigger and better cedars in their place.

God, speaking through Isaiah, explained what would happen as a result of their pride and arrogance and failure to heed the harbinger: Bigger and more potent attacks would follow. Because neither the northern kingdom of Israel nor the southern kingdom of Judah truly repented, the first was eventually swept away by Assyrian invaders and the latter was carried off into captivity by the Babylonians for 70 years.